British Airways grounds ALL flights to and from Gatwick due to coronavirus – hours after easyJet took its entire fleet out of service
- BA is closing its entire Gatwick operation and concentrating service at Heathrow
- easyJet, whose largest hub is also Gatwick, grounded all 330 planes yesterday
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British Airways today axed all its flights to and from Gatwick Airport as coronavirus continues to strangle the aviation industry.
The airline, which jets to Europe, America and the Caribbean from the West Sussex airport, has already mothballed jets at Bournemouth, Glasgow and Cardiff – but is still running from London Heathrow with a severely reduced schedule.
The decision by BA to shut its Gatwick operation came hours after easyJet grounded its entire fleet of 330 planes
British Airways today axed all its flights to and from Gatwick as the aviation industry continued to collapse because of coronavirus
Earlier this month the owners of British Airways, IAG, announced three-quarters of flights will be cut over the next two months also said it was ‘taking actions to reduce operating expenses and improve cash flow’.
These include temporarily suspending employment contracts, reducing working hours and offering staff unpaid leave.
The group, which also owns Iberia and Vueling, employs 66,000 staff.
Its chief executive Willie Walsh has stressed that he had not requested a government bail-out and insisted IAG was ‘resilient with a strong balance sheet’.
Airlines are in the process of temporarily laying off tens of thousands of staff without pay.
Amid warnings of an industry collapse within weeks, BA-owner IAG, EasyJet, Ryanair and Norwegian all revealed drastic plans to slash costs and ground flights.
Virgin Atlantic said staff had agreed to take eight weeks of unpaid leave over the next three months, with the salary docked from workers’ pay over six months so their income does not dry up.
All 10,000 employees of the company, founded and controlled by Richard Branson, will also be offered voluntary redundancy.
In a sign of the scale of the coronavirus crisis, the airlines have been backed by the union Unite and pilots association Balpa.
The most extreme measures were taken by Norwegian, which is the third largest airline at Gatwick. It is temporarily laying off around 7,300 staff – 90 per cent of its workforce.
The airline which is saddled with debt, has lost more than 80 per cent of its market value since the start of the year.